Ruminations on law and life

Never Mind the Misfortunes of Others.

Driving down the sun-drenched Phoenix asphalt the other day, I found myself talking to my radio. Why? Well, it was either that or punch my foot through the floor board on hearing author Christopher Steiner happily opine from his new book on how gasoline at $20.00 per gallon would make our lives better.

In essence, Steiner pleasantly explained how high-priced fuel would compel people to live closer to work; to walk more; to stop being so fat; to shop better;to drive slower; to breathe cleaner air; and to generally, live better lives through Steiner.

A year ago, a barrel of oil was $120 and the average price of regular unleaded was over $4.00. Today, it’s about $2.59 depending on where you live. Oil is about $70 a barrel. Sadly, for self-styled moralizing busybodies like Steiner, fuel prices are heading the wrong way and undermining the utopian fantasies he foresees from higher priced fuel.

But then, there’s nothing like the tyranny of the nanny-state. Why figure anything out for yourself when you have someone like Steiner to do it for you? Steiner’s book is $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better.

Today, Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma was mentioned in the context of how higher priced food is an advisable trade-off for healthier, locally grown, small farmer organic food versus lower-priced industrialized agribusiness factory food we now get for mass consumption. Like $20 a gallon gasoline, there’s nothing more palatable for those wanting to save us from ourselves than $7 per gallon organic milk and $5 per loaf of organic bread.

A modern variant of Rochefoucauld's famous maxim is that the easiest pain to bear is someone else's.

“We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others,” said the 17th century author, Francois de La Rochefoucauld. This maxim, well known to me, kept coursing through my mind as I heard Steiner’s cavalier fantasies and then reflected on Pollan’s companionable ideas. In fairness, their admonitions didn’t reek of disdain. Rather, such facile offhandedness is redolent of a woeful ignorance of how many of us live.

Of course, if people were sufficiently well paid, they could afford to live next door to their jobs. But then again, if there wasn’t a recession brought about by willful blindness, greed and a banking and housing implosion, then maybe the prospects of savoring a $4 carton of local organic eggs might appeal to folks working two and three jobs to get by. But then, maybe not.

People commute long distances not because they want to but because they have to. Pricing gasoline at unaffordable levels won’t generate the utopian solutions envisioned by misguided savants like Steiner. What shackles commuter slaves to their automobiles is found in the familiar real estate refrain, “Drive until you qualify.”

For many, living in non-metro areas and driving long distances to work is an unfortunate necessity not a pretext for long car rides and personal and vehicular wear and tear. It’s what we do for affordable housing in a decent neighborhood for our families.

Therefore, when so-called pundits offer up far too easily such painfully intrusive and self-righteous prescriptions to remedy what they’ve diagnosed as our societal ills, they do a great disservice. The cure might indeed be worse than the illness.

Returning to a pre-industrialized society without widespread access to affordable food, clothing and shelter is an atavistic, nonsensical solution. Such a vision already exists. It’s called life in the Third World.

In sum, the consequences of such well-intentioned but foolish recommendations aren’t merely deleterious. They are dire for those living on the fringes or clinging by a torn fingernail to their sliver of the American Dream.